Presumably, the all-too-common “abstract knowledge of physics is a separate magisterium from practical life skills” sort of cognitive failure, of which most people are guilty (myself included—though I have managed to train myself out of it, somewhat).
If you can think of a good ‘rationalist cooking’ post to write (well, call it ‘optimal cooking’, but you get what I mean) about applying the rationalist paradigm to cooking e.g. what cognitive habits are better and the sorts of blindspots people have, that would just be awesome.
I do have a “rationalist cooking” (heh) post in the works, as it happens, so I’ll take your comment as encouragement to finish it up and post it. (By the way, how does cross-posting work? Do I just manually copy/paste content from my blog, or is there some more fancy way?)
In the meantime, I can hardly do better than to recommend Christopher Kimball’s two books: the Cook’s Bible and the Dessert Bible. Kimball is already as close to a “rationalist cook” as you’re likely to find, and these two cookbooks are written with a very empiricist, question-all-assumptions, attitude; Kimball conducts taste tests, tries recipes in many ways, and consults with food scientists to figure out why things happen a certain way. The actual recipes then also (in addition to being very clearly written) come with “What Can Go Wrong” sections—notes about specific failure modes, and how to mitigate them. For anyone who likes to cook or wants to learn, I think these two cookbooks can advance your grasp, not only of cooking, but of rationality as well.
Indeed you can! However, I find that this approach is not worth it except in one case, because washing a box grater is annoying, and cubing the butter works well enough.
(That one exception is when making pie dough by hand, i.e. without a food processor.)
(Also, I expect the “cleaning is annoying” calculus is different for people who own a dishwasher… although some box graters may not be dishwasher-safe—I am fairly sure mine is not, for instance.)
Take a sharp knife (i.e. a chef’s knife). Run it under hot tap water for a few seconds, then wipe it with a paper towel. Then, use it to cut your butter (repeating the hot-tap-water/wipe-with-towel procedure after every few cuts).
(After all, where do you think the expression “went through [thing] like a hot knife through butter” comes from? ;)
(This is also how you can cut cheesecake, or brownies; doing it this way results in clean cuts, and prevents the cheesecake/brownies/etc. from getting mangled.)
Excellent post; I wholly endorse basically everything here.
Unrelated to the core point, but possibly useful to some folks reading this:
Cut the butter up into 1/2″ chunks while it’s cold; this way, it’ll become softened much faster.
Face palm. Of course!
Now I’m wondering what the cognitive failure is that caused me not to automatically do that without it being pointed out.
Presumably, the all-too-common “abstract knowledge of physics is a separate magisterium from practical life skills” sort of cognitive failure, of which most people are guilty (myself included—though I have managed to train myself out of it, somewhat).
If you can think of a good ‘rationalist cooking’ post to write (well, call it ‘optimal cooking’, but you get what I mean) about applying the rationalist paradigm to cooking e.g. what cognitive habits are better and the sorts of blindspots people have, that would just be awesome.
I do have a “rationalist cooking” (heh) post in the works, as it happens, so I’ll take your comment as encouragement to finish it up and post it. (By the way, how does cross-posting work? Do I just manually copy/paste content from my blog, or is there some more fancy way?)
In the meantime, I can hardly do better than to recommend Christopher Kimball’s two books: the Cook’s Bible and the Dessert Bible. Kimball is already as close to a “rationalist cook” as you’re likely to find, and these two cookbooks are written with a very empiricist, question-all-assumptions, attitude; Kimball conducts taste tests, tries recipes in many ways, and consults with food scientists to figure out why things happen a certain way. The actual recipes then also (in addition to being very clearly written) come with “What Can Go Wrong” sections—notes about specific failure modes, and how to mitigate them. For anyone who likes to cook or wants to learn, I think these two cookbooks can advance your grasp, not only of cooking, but of rationality as well.
Ace. It’s copy-only. If there’s issues, do ping me in the intercom.
Thin slices work pretty well too. Or you can (with care) accelerate the process with a microwave oven on its lowest setting.
You can also grate butter, as in with a cheese grater, and that helps too.
Indeed you can! However, I find that this approach is not worth it except in one case, because washing a box grater is annoying, and cubing the butter works well enough.
(That one exception is when making pie dough by hand, i.e. without a food processor.)
(Also, I expect the “cleaning is annoying” calculus is different for people who own a dishwasher… although some box graters may not be dishwasher-safe—I am fairly sure mine is not, for instance.)
The microwave method is a lot more error-prone! (Also, I don’t own a microwave.)
I freeze butter; cutting it up from frozen is hard.
Here’s what you do:
Take a sharp knife (i.e. a chef’s knife). Run it under hot tap water for a few seconds, then wipe it with a paper towel. Then, use it to cut your butter (repeating the hot-tap-water/wipe-with-towel procedure after every few cuts).
(After all, where do you think the expression “went through [thing] like a hot knife through butter” comes from? ;)
(This is also how you can cut cheesecake, or brownies; doing it this way results in clean cuts, and prevents the cheesecake/brownies/etc. from getting mangled.)